I’ve been talking and emailing books with my good friend Dr. M lately, and what’s been coming up for both of us is the Twelve Dancing Princesses. We’ve both been coming across multiple novel retellings. When I tried to retell the one below as a two-night bedtime story for the Boy*, he was fascinated, but wanted a picture book version, too. I’m looking at a couple of those and will weigh in about favorites.
*The boy was first known here as Mr. Froggy Pants or Mr. FP. Once he outgrew the froggy diapers, he made up Lightening Bolt. Now he gives me a funny look if I call him that, and his personal interests are so varied and variable that I don’t know what nickname to give him here anymore.
The Princess Curse by Merrie Haskell This is a Romanian version of the Twelve Dancing Princesses. 13-year-old Reveka is an herbalist’s apprentice, newly reclaimed by her father from a nunnery and brought to the castle where he works as a gardener. The princesses in this version include a number of legitimized bastard daughters as well as serial wives, rather than twelve daughters all from the same mother, a rather thoughtful touch. When Reveka learns about the curse on the princesses, she is initially scornful: “It’s a curse of shoes and naps!” But it turns out that those who try to rescue the princesses from the curse never come back the same way. Some vanish forever, some fall into a deep sleep from which nothing can awaken them, only to slip into death after months or years. As the vanished and sleeping include nobles from other countries who don’t believe in the curse, the small kingdom of Sylvania is in danger of war from multiple sides. Reveka, though, resolves to break the curse for a much more personal reason: the king has promised a dowry to any woman who breaks the curse. That would allow her to buy her way into a convent, where she could set up her own herbarium and write an herbal like her heroine, Saint Hildegard. She turns to the herbals she has access to, and a list of potential herbal sources of invisibility. Things heat up as Reveka meets a mysterious stranger in the woods, dressed in red velvet and calling himself Prince Frumos, the traditional hero of folk tales, and when her fellow apprentice Didina is discovered trying to follow the princesses. She seeks help from the mistress of the baths, who tells her that only a zmeu, a kind of humanoid maiden-marrying dragon of legend, could have caused such a curse as the princesses are under. When Reveka finally discovers a way to follow the princesses, the plot took a very sharp and unexpected plot turn, one which provided a lot of discussion fodder for the Boy and I at bedtime as to whether or not Reveka made the right choice. Reveka is a bright, stubborn and likable character. I liked learning bits of Romanian mythos, something I know very little about. Dragons in any form are a plus. It’s good fun appropriate for middle-grade students and other lovers of fairy-tale fiction, with a few reflective notes. And on a small world note, Haskell works at the library of the university from which I got my library degree.
The Knitter’s Home Companion by 
Rampant by 
Ninja Cowboy Bear Presents: the Way of the Ninja by David Bruins. Pictures by Hilary Leung. The ninja, the cowboy, and the bear are all friends. Usually they have a great time together, but “One day, the ninja’s ways came between him and his friends. This is what happened.” There is a moral, of course – the ninja wants to play with his friends, but only his way. When they don’t want to play his extremely active, often injury-inducing way, he goes off to play by himself. You can guess the message, of course, but the telling is delightful. The language is the perfect combination of concise yet formal, giving the simple story an epic feel. The art is brightly rounded and looks digitally created, each character with a distinctive style. When the text describes the characters talking, they’ll be shown with thought or speech bubbles filled with descriptive pictures rather than text. The ninja’s has kanji alongside the beautiful Japanese-style pictures in his thought bubbles. (Transliteration and translation are both supplied on the copyright page, for those who don’t read kanji.) In this book, the ninja’s detailed half-page picture descriptions of what he’d like to do with his friends contrast vividly with his friends’ tiny black and white ideas. Small bluebirds around the edges of the page give occasional one-picture commentary on the action. In the end – hooray! – the ninja finds a way to work the action and adventure he craves into the activities his friends want to do. The only caveat that I have to give for this book is that it is not for bedtime reading. I was alone with the kiddos the evening I brought this home from the library, and kept hearing loud thunks from downstairs while I was trying to put the toddler to sleep. It transpired that my son had been inspired by the book to try great ninja leaps across the living room. Otherwise, this book is perfection. 
The Rough Guide to English Folk. According to the back copy, English folk music has been experiencing resurgence. Hooray! This disc features a wide variety of modern English folk musicians, from instrumental to vocal and from traditional interpretations to folk-rock. I had only heard of one of the artists on this album, Kathryn Tickell, whom I was fortunate enough to see live in front of, I believe, a Maddy Prior concert years ago. This album was a hit with everyone listening to it. I loved the range of songs – the foot-tapping rhythms of Kathryn Tickell’s Northumbrian pipes, the dense male harmonies, the ballads based on fairy tales and wars current and remembered. I’m going to look into getting more from Emily Portman, whose “Tongue-Tied”, a haunting ballad retelling of the tale of the Wild Swans (but with ravens instead of swans) that went through my head for days. The six-year-old boy, forced to listen to music rather than our book (the thrilling Septimus Heap book 6 – Darke), liked it after all and said it reminded him of Pennsic. And the toddler is still asking for it, and was singing the tunes even after the car was turned off. 
The Silver Bowl by Diane Stanley. Molly was only seven when her abusive father decided she was too much trouble to take care of anymore. He got her a job as a scullery maid at the castle. During their brief farewell, Molly’s room-bound mother gave her the lovely silver necklace her father had given her and told her to wear it, but keep it hidden. It’s a small link to the family heritage of seeing visions that Molly has just found out that she and her mother share. It takes some quick learning to fit in at the castle, but knowing she has nowhere else to go, Molly is motivated. She makes friends with another lowly castle employee, Tobias, the donkey boy. After a few years as a scullery maid, she is taken by Thomas, the silver master, to help with the silver polishing. There she is given the job of polishing the great silver bowl, used by the royal family for washing hands before meals. It’s filled with intricate designs, and every time Molly polishes it, it grows warm in her hands and draws her into visions. Through these she learns that the bowl is filled with curses aimed at the royal family, which the visions want her to break. As she pieces together what a person of her lowly position might be able to do about this, the plot heats up until the life of the prince and the fate of the entire kingdom are resting in her hands. This is a lovely below-the-stairs medieval fantasy, with class playing an important part. Even when Molly and Prince Alaric are put in a position where they have to talk to each other, there’s great consciousness that this is not the normal order of things. Earlier on, her efforts to stop things going wrong in the first place are seriously hampered by her position as a young serving girl, as well as her unorthodox methods of knowing things. Though this is definitely a fantasy, Molly’s visions aren’t something that anybody else in her world could be expected to believe. There’s some second-hand gore here, so while most of this is suitable for middle grade students, those highly sensitive or on the lower end of the age range might want to avoid it. The writing holds up beautifully for readers of the intended age and up – my mother snagged it off my table and finished it in two sittings.
Diaper-Free before Three by Jill Lekovic This book was for me a strange mixture of my favorite and least favorite styles of parenting books. It started off with a history of toilet training over time. She looks at literature describing when children used to be trained, advice for mothers from the Victorian era on, and studies of toilet training practices and the ages of beginning and completion from the past century. 
Cinnamon Baby by Nicola Winstanley. Illustrated by Janice Nadeau Miriam is a baker. She sings and bakes every morning in her bakery, all different kinds of delicious bread, always finishing with her favorite cinnamon bread. One day, Sebastian rides by on his bicycle. Lured in by the smell and Miriam’s sweet voice, he buys bread from her every day for a year. Then, they marry and have a baby. Though it’s not noted in the text, Sebastian is dark-skinned and Miriam pale; their baby comes out the color of cinnamon. After a few blissful days, though, the baby starts crying. Nothing either Miriam or Sebastian can do soothes it. Finally, Miriam wakes the exhausted Sebastian early in the morning to bring the baby with her to the bakery. When the sweet smell of cinnamon and the sound of its mother’s voice fill the air, the baby is finally soothed. 
Steampunk-style Jewelry by Jean Campbell Steampunk, for this purpose, is loosely defined as fantasy Victorian with an emphasis on the beauty of early mechanical pieces. The jewelry is projects intended for the reader to be able to reproduce and use as inspiration. There are necklaces, earrings and bracelets. They use bead or craft store bits and wire, often combined with gears and other parts from cannibalized antique watches or reproduced old photographs. There is a lengthy introduction on the techniques used. When hazardous materials are used, cautions are given both in the intro and in the individual projects. The instructions seem thorough, including lists of materials and which steps might need practicing on scrap materials first, which, as a novice would-be jewelry-maker, I appreciate. 
Campfire Cookery by Sarah Huck and Jaime Young I have been a camper for as long as I can remember. But up until now, our camp cooking has consisted of one of three styles: something close to our regular fare cooked over a propane or butane burner, food of the type that can be stuck on a stick and held over the fire, or food that can be wrapped in foil and stuck in the coals. I thought that as we were using heat to do cook mostly fresh food, we were doing quite well. This book, however, strives to juxtapose the beauty of and simplicity of nature with the very best in cookery. Huck and Young advocate real cooking over or in your campfire, or, if you must, your backyard fire or grill. Their advice is a mix of practical and silly, told in an archly formal tone so funny that it made the book a delight to read whether or not I had any intentions of trying their recipes. Their packing list started off with essentials, all of which I agreed with (cast iron cookware, steel mixing bowls, three knives) and proceeded on to optional items – a parasol, swathes of lace for keeping flies off food, smelling salts. They include instructions on how to construct a safe fire area in the wilderness, how to build your fire without matches or fire starters, how to gauge the heat of your flame for cooking purposes, and how to return your fire spot to nature when you are done. The recipes seem mostly French inspired, with some English tea-time thrown in for good measure. They start off with recipes to make at home, including potted spreads, ketchup, and the homemade graham crackers and marshmallows shown on the cover. They move on to all the major meals, tea time, breads and dessert, with suggested beverages (alcoholic and non, but mostly alcoholic) for all of these. Many of the recipes include items they suggest you forage for, or perhaps purchase at a farmer’s market on the way in. They look delicious, though what’s sticking in my mind right now are the roasted figs with honey, and fresh biscuits baked in the fire. 
alibrarymama 